Why Were the Panthers Let Off?

From Fox News:

It seems abundantly clear to me that the Panthers were let off simply because they were the Panthers. Remember, in the liberal world view, black people can never be racist because only people with “power” can be racist…no matter who obviously racist a non-white group is, a liberal will still never call them that.

We won’t be able to obtain justice in the United States while the Obama Administration is in office – they are incapable of providing it because they don’t know what it is.

The Ever Expanding Google

Is Google taking things too far? Their expansion is getting disturbing.

Google has been using its dominant position in online search to muscle its way into other Internet businesses, ultimately limiting consumer choice, Consumer Watchdog said today in a report written for its new Inside Google Website.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer group is sending the report to U.S. and European antitrust regulators.

[...]

The Inside Google study found that since adopting “Universal Search,” which favors Google’s properties with prominent listings in its results, traffic to Google’s sites has soared at the expense of competitors. The controversial search practice was launched in 2007.

“Google claims that its search is neutral,” said John M. Simpson, consumer advocate with the group. “This study shows that it’s not and demonstrates the damaging impact Google’s unfair practices have had on competitors.”

Consumer Watchdog will give the Inside Google study, “Traffic Report: How Google is Squeezing out Competitors and Muscling Into New Markets,” to U.S. Justice Department and European Commission antitrust officials.

The study of Internet traffic data for more than 100 popular websites since 2007 revealed Google’s dramatic gains. In the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, Inside Google obtained three years of Internet traffic data from the respected web metrics firm Experian Hitwise. The data allowed an analysis of Google’s business practices and performance that is unprecedented in scope.

What do you think?

At Last! Machine Guns in Political Ads!

Just love it:

I’m noticing an increasing willingness to not just be conservative, but to be in-your-face conservative.

Democrats Continue to Spend Money We Don't Have

And their latest tactic is to just shove so many things in to the bill that it might find a majority for passage:

…The plan is to create one bill that combines the unemployment benefits with an extension of a popular tax credit for people who buy new homes…

…The measure, which is the same as the one in the Senate bill, would provide up to 99 weekly unemployment checks averaging $335 to people whose 26 weeks of state-paid benefits have run out. The benefits would be available through the end of November, at a cost of $33.9 billion. There are no offsets in the bill, so the cost would add to the budget deficit…

Just pile it on, Democrats – there is a bottomless well of money and we’ll never have to pay back our national debt. Its not like there’s a cent which can be cut elsewhere, you know. Every bit of federal spending is crucial – cut a penny of it, and we’ll all died. What’s more important: our long term economic health, or getting you re-elected in November?

Just insane. And it will all have to be paid for – and it will be the poor and middle class footing the bill for this idiocy.

Al Gore and How Liberals Act

From Byron York’s article on the Gore sex scandal:

…Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her “to just suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.”…

For liberals, advancing the agenda is all that matters – and if part of the price to be paid is that a person must be sexually violated by a liberal leader, then its ok. A bit of a grope is to be set against the possibility that Gore will save us all from global warming…

The thing to draw out of this is that everything is political with them. The only time it ceases to be so is when one of them comes to his or her senses and ceases to be a liberal. Take nothing they say at face value unless it is confirmed elsewhere by impeccable sources – you’ll never know when they are trying to snow you in the name of the Cause.

Elena Kagan Hides Her Leftist Ideology

This exchange at the hearings is pretty much all we need to know about her:

Senator Coburn asks if Congress passes a law mandating we all eat our vegetables, would that go beyond the scope of the “commerce clause” – Kagan essentially declines to answer. We can only presume this is because she can’t think of anything which would not be covered by the “commerce clause” – that she can’t think of a power Congress doesn’t have, as long as they can dress it up as affecting inter-State commerce.

Kagan may be lots of things, but she has no business on America’s highest court.

Daily Kos Published Bogus Polls (Bumped)

From from the horse’s as..errmm, I mean from the horse’s mouth:

…We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it’s clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don’t know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can’t trust it…(Ed. Note: we normally do not link to hate sites, such as Daily Kos, but as the left believes Kos’ polls, this is an important bit of news worthy of an exception.)

I’m willing to give Kos the benefit of the doubt on this – the polls consistently came out the way he would have liked them to come out, and in the true fashion of the left, little or no effort will ever be made questioning the pro-left data (global warming was built up just like this). Kos is the victim here – but the victim of that leftist worldview which builds up barriers to free inquiry.

Research 2000 may have just seen an easy mark – I long ago figured out how I could become quite wealthy: just start feeding the left whatever it wants to hear. And if I did it as a conservative who saw the light and was trying to make amends for my previous wickedness, it would have been that much fatter a paycheck. The left doesn’t think, doesn’t question – lacks real world knowledge and is ill equipped to figure out a scam (thus Frank and Dodd, who largely created the financial crisis, are charged by the left with fixing it).

Given the level of suckerness (as it were) on the left, I could have carried off such a scam quite easily – but while I’m no saint, I’m not someone who can run a con like that. Kos was taken in – and will be, again. As sure as night follows day, the next person or entity who will tell Kos what he wants to hear will be believed by him without question…if it ever winds up differently, it will only be because Kos figures it out, and becomes a conservative.

UPDATE: Research 2000 is counter-suing Daily Kos?

…Ali’s attorney, Richard Beckler of Howrey LLP in Washington, told TPMmuckraker in an interview, “This guy is completely all wet. This allegation of fraud is absurd.” He added, “These guys are basically ruining Mr. Ali’s business.”

Beckler promised to take “some kind of action soon against all of them” — referring to Kos and the three authors of the analysis calling R2K’s data into question. He declined to elaborate…

I love it when lefties start ripping in to each other.

Economically, We're Boxed in Pretty Tight

Alex Daley over at Casey Research lays out the very depressing case:

…For the first time in a long time, developed governments in Europe and the U.S. face the specter of sub-AAA credit ratings and rapidly rising costs of borrowing more (ratings that, frankly, had they been put in place by the inept agencies years ago when they were initially deserved may have had repercussions that would have helped us avoid many of today’s problems). Between rising borrowing costs, the already hefty budgetary burden of paying prior debt interest, and the ever-expanding rolls of government employees, legislators can hardly keep up on the bills these days, let alone inject any more into the economy.

The irony, of course, is that by unloading a full clip from the assault rifle when trying to “save” the economy, the governments of the OECD nations have actually created a catch-22 situation. One wherein they not only have no tools left to manipulate the markets against a further slowdown, but also where they have created monetary policy so extreme that undoing it would be more disastrous than the fallout would have been had they not stepped in in the first place….

As I’ve said before, there isn’t any way to avoid the next part of the crash. I don’t think there ever was, as Keynesian pump-priming has never worked. Oh, I know it is a matter of liberal religious faith that such policies cured the Great Depression, but that is just utter nonsense, as can be seen with a cursory glance at the relevant data. Be that as it may, even if such things do work, there’s no way to do it any longer – we’re simply out of money. Even if you whistle up a couple trillion more dollars at the Federal Reserve, all you’ll do is move the crisis from one set of bankrupt entities to another – you might buy yourself a few weeks, if you do that…and just make matters worse, in the long run.

We are going to be forced to balance our budget by simple fact of not being able to borrow any more money. Initially upon the crash, no one will have any to lend – later, anyone who has rebuilt a bit of wealth will stay away from government issued debt as too risky. It will be very, very painful – but, bankruptcy always is. The good news is that once we’re out of it, we’re done – we can start rebuilding again…and, hopefully, learn our lesson and pass relevant laws forbidding both the issuance of government debt as well as government backing for any private, financial transaction. Government debt, in the sense we know it, was invented almost by accident in the 18th century (and was created largely to bail out idiots who got themselves wrapped up in a stock market bubble…sound familiar?) – taking the long view of things (as I like to do), we can see that the three century experiment in this has failed. We should not try it, again.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Consumer Confidence Drops Like a Rock

From Reuters via ABC News – the “unexpected” news:

…The group’s index of consumer attitudes fell to 52.9 in June from a downwardly revised 62.7 in May. The June figure was sharply below the median of forecasts from analysts polled by Reuters…

Happy talk from banksters and bureaucrats only goes so far…and then people see their home values continue to drop, unemployment remains high and essentially everything going to economic heck in a hand basket. Reality is just setting in.

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Sorry for the light blogging, everyone – I’m on a “stay-cation” this week and thus am spending time with the Mrs and friends getting as much fun as you can in a town like Las Vegas…which is, of course, quite a lot.

I’ll try to have something good for you later today.